We have reached the point where vigilantes provide the only security for law-abiding citizens. The government is aiding and abetting the lawlessness and anarchy in the streets. America has become hopelessly corrupt and fascistic. Along with NATO (which will be discarded if the USA manages to put a puppet in control of Moscow), the USA and its vassal Ukraine challenge China as the world's worst totalitarian enemy of freedom. If there is any future for Christianity, it lives within the Russian Orthodox Church.
The idea that lies beneath what Charles Clemens wrote 5 hours ago is one I agree with wholeheartedly. Our society, for whatever reason and by whomever, is being pushed into a corner. We're becoming de-civilized. Literally. Civilization is a structure for life, and the structure is being dismantled.
Our civilization is the result of thousands of years of trial-and-error. It is what has historically been found to "work." What we have now is a situation which is testing whether the nearest approximation of democratic government can stand up to an attempt to destroy it by proving it no longer "works." We, and it, may fail the test.
The last such challenge was not the Civil War, but the attempt to recover from it. Reconstruction was official policy from 1865 to 1877. It was the biggest failure of the Grant administration. One of the agents that defeated Reconstruction was the Ku Klux Klan, which saw itself as protecting southern life from the federal government. There was a basic disconnect between the way those living in the South saw reality, compared to what was reality to the philosophers who were in control.
The Klan itself was defeated not by force, but by time. I don't think anybody wants the formation of another Klan, but the radical Left, which is in charge of the government today, seems determined to create a situation where those who disagree with them are on the way to being intolerably oppressed by the government that is supposed to protect them. Civil rights for many are being trampled in the name of civil rights for the few.
American democracy has always depended on overriding good will among citizens, an official support for tolerance of disagreement about policies, and upon an unspoken agreement with the belief that individual rights, tempered by reasonable laws, are paramount. When those in charge no longer recognize that dependency, they place those who do in an untenable position. The result won't be good.
We have reached the point where vigilantes provide the only security for law-abiding citizens. The government is aiding and abetting the lawlessness and anarchy in the streets. America has become hopelessly corrupt and fascistic. Along with NATO (which will be discarded if the USA manages to put a puppet in control of Moscow), the USA and its vassal Ukraine challenge China as the world's worst totalitarian enemy of freedom. If there is any future for Christianity, it lives within the Russian Orthodox Church.
The idea that lies beneath what Charles Clemens wrote 5 hours ago is one I agree with wholeheartedly. Our society, for whatever reason and by whomever, is being pushed into a corner. We're becoming de-civilized. Literally. Civilization is a structure for life, and the structure is being dismantled.
Our civilization is the result of thousands of years of trial-and-error. It is what has historically been found to "work." What we have now is a situation which is testing whether the nearest approximation of democratic government can stand up to an attempt to destroy it by proving it no longer "works." We, and it, may fail the test.
The last such challenge was not the Civil War, but the attempt to recover from it. Reconstruction was official policy from 1865 to 1877. It was the biggest failure of the Grant administration. One of the agents that defeated Reconstruction was the Ku Klux Klan, which saw itself as protecting southern life from the federal government. There was a basic disconnect between the way those living in the South saw reality, compared to what was reality to the philosophers who were in control.
The Klan itself was defeated not by force, but by time. I don't think anybody wants the formation of another Klan, but the radical Left, which is in charge of the government today, seems determined to create a situation where those who disagree with them are on the way to being intolerably oppressed by the government that is supposed to protect them. Civil rights for many are being trampled in the name of civil rights for the few.
American democracy has always depended on overriding good will among citizens, an official support for tolerance of disagreement about policies, and upon an unspoken agreement with the belief that individual rights, tempered by reasonable laws, are paramount. When those in charge no longer recognize that dependency, they place those who do in an untenable position. The result won't be good.